Method, apparatus, computer program, computer system and computer-readable storage for representing and searching for an object in an image

1. A method for searching for an object appearing in an image, comprising:

receiving an input including at least one object having an outline;

determining a curvature scale space representation for said input outline to generate a plurality of curves representative of said input outline;

determining peaks and associated peak coordinates for said plurality of curves;

generating a shape descriptor for said outline using a non-linear calculation applied to y-coordinate values of said peak coordinates;

comparing said shape descriptor for said input outline to a shape descriptor for an image stored in memory to find at least one substantially matching image; and

outputting said at least one substantially matching image.

2. A method as claimed in claim 1 wherein the transformation is applied to the co-ordinate values corresponding to a smoothing parameter in the CSS representation.

3. A method as claimed in claim 1 wherein said transformation is in the form of y′=a pow (y,b)+c, where a, b and c are constants and pow (y,b) denotes y to the power b.

4. A method as claimed in claim 3 wherein b is greater than zero and less than 1.

5. A method as claimed in claim 3 wherein b is in the range of 0.25<=b<=0.75.

6. A method as claimed in claim 5 wherein b=0.5.

7. An apparatus configured to implement a method as claimed in claim 1 .

8. A computer system programmed to operate according to a method as claimed in claim 1 .

9. A computer-readable storage medium storing computer-executable process steps for implementing a method as claimed in claim 1 .

10. A system for searching for an object appearing in an image, comprising:

an input device for inputting and least one object having an outline;

a controller and a detector for receiving said input object having an outline and determining a curvature scale space representation for said input outline to generate a plurality of curves representative of said input outline, and for determining peaks and associated peak coordinates for said plurality of curves;

wherein said controller to generate a shape descriptor for said outline using a non-linear calculation applied to y-coordinate values of said peak coordinates;

a comparator for comparing said shape descriptor for said input outline to a shape descriptor for an image stored in memory to find at least one substantially matching image; and

a display for displaying said at least one substantially matching image.

11. A method for searching an image applied to a comparator in a search system as claimed in claim 10 , comprising:

receiving a first shape descriptor for an object in said image, said shape descriptor including a plurality of peak coordinates for a curvature scale space (CSS) representation of an outline of said object, said peak coordinates of said CSS representation are generated by smoothing said outline in a plurality of stages, each of said peak coordinates including a y-coordinate value being applied a non-linear calculation; and

comparing said first shape descriptor for said object to a second shape descriptor for an image stored in memory to find at least one substantially matching image, wherein each of said peak coordinates is compared to corresponding coordinate of said second shape descriptor in said memory.

12. A method for searching an image applied to a controller in a search system as claimed in claim 10 , comprising:

generating peak coordinates for a curvature scale space (CSS) representation of an outline of an object in said image by smoothing said outline in a plurality of stages;

applying a non-linear calculation to y-coordinates of said peak coordinates to generate a shape descriptor for said object;

transmitting said shape descriptor to a comparator to search at least one substantially matching image; and

receiving, from said comparator, and displaying said one substantially matching image.

13. A machine-readable medium having stored thereon a plurality of executable instructions, the plurality of instructions comprising instructions to receive an input including at least one object having an outline;

determine a curvature scale space representation for said input outline to generate a plurality of curves representative of said input outline;

determine peaks and associated peak coordinates for said plurality of curves;

generate a shape descriptor for said outline using a non-linear calculation applied to y-coordinate values of said peak coordinates;

compare said shape descriptor for said input outline to a shape descriptor for an image stored in memory to find at least one substantially matching image; and

output said at least one substantially matching image.

14. A method for searching for an object in an image or sequence of images by processing signals corresponding to images, the method comprising inputting a query in the form of a two-dimensional outline, deriving a descriptor of said outline, obtaining a descriptor of objects in stored images and comparing said query descriptor with each descriptor for a stored object, and selecting and displaying at least one result corresponding to an image containing an object for which the comparison indicates a degree of similarity between the query and said object, wherein the descriptors of the query outline and/or stored object outline are derived by deriving a plurality of co-ordinate values for peaks in curvature scale space (CSS) representing features appearing on the outline and applying a non-linear transformation to the peak height co-ordinate values to arrive at a representation of the outline.